Monday, February 05, 2007

Gay Fathers Should Breastfeed

Men can breastfeed. Manual stimulation, especially with a breast pump, can stimulate lactation. Men's milk is pretty much as good as women's milk. Breastfeeding builds a bond between mother and child – I think it should have a similar effect for father and child, in the absence of a mother.

Seems to me like the answer to this 'why not?' is in the way we've defined fatherhood and masculinity and conceptualized what men's bodies 'should' do and look like. The intimacy and close contact and physical changed involved in breastfeeding doesn't fit that definition. And changing societal definitions like this takes a long long time.

Some men, gay and straight, might want to challenge this notion through doing something like breastfeeding; most probably would not.

As to the Washington State initiative to require all marriages to have kids; an institution can embody a social norm without requiring that each individual within that institution embody the norm. This is why everyone should study sociology. :-)

Well, Mary Jo, if some het dads want to breast feed, it is a free country. And I suppose if mom couldn't, that might be a sensible, if weird solution. Still, mother's milk is somewhat better and much easier to come by than father's milk -- especially if mom is going to be producing it, anyway. Maybe parents of triplets might press dad into service?

Thanks for pointing out the ridiculous Washington State proposal. I've already blogged on it, and written the organization asking if they are out of their minds.

This shows that at least some gay rights supporters can't do math. The gay population is small enough (let's be generous and include bisexual folks with strong homosexual tendencies and say 20% of the population) that it needs the support of straight folks in order to change laws.

Pissing off straight supporters isn't the way to do it. This proposal directly attacks ME.

Here is a downside. Many adoptive mothers want to breastfeed. But most adoptions are not "planned events" (you don't know exactly when the child will arrive; you don't know exactly how old the child will be at arrival). So you can pump and pump for months and maybe the child will not latch on because he is too old; you often cannot provide all the necessary nutrition thise way, it is usually just supplemental to formula/bottle feeding. So I see the same practical downside for many fathers in gay couple -- often adoptive parents themselves. I bonded with my (adopted) children without breastfeeding.

The practical problems are overwhelming, Gruntled. But it is more than that... the downside is this very argument that there is one way to raise children/parent children. I hesitate to add "breastfeeding" to the Essential Tenets on Parenting.